Principal Enterprise Architect at CME Group in Chicago, IL

Principal Enterprise Architect
Location: Chicago - 20 S. Wacker
The Senior Director, Principal Enterprise Architect is a thought leader and strategic visionary responsible for the architectural health, direction, and evolution of an entire portfolio of products at CME Group. Operating at the highest levels of the Architecture Foundry’s Central Hub and reporting directly to the Chief Architect, you will serve as the executive "City Planner" for the enterprise.
In this role, you will lead the transition of architecture from reactive "Architecture by Governance" to a proactive, automated "Architecture by Enablement" paradigm. You will direct and influence cross-functional teams to replace legacy, gatekeeper-style hurdles with agile, automated compliance guardrails and developer self-service options (such as certified "Paved Paths").
You will act as the primary catalyst for scaling a modern engineering culture—embedding a strict "You Build It, You Run It" (YBIYRI) operational philosophy across the organization. Additionally, you will drive the adoption of Generative AI, cloud-native design, and complex topologies while ensuring absolute compliance with CME’s rigorous regulatory and Systemically Important Financial Market Utility (SIFMU) standards.
What You’ll Do
Portfolio Strategy & Modern Enablement
Define Enterprise Strategy: Serve as the strategic visionary for a broad portfolio of products, analyzing and integrating complex, wide-ranging systems to solve industry-level problems and shift the organization toward advanced, cloud-native designs.
Architecture by Enablement: Replace reactive "Toll Gate" governance with an agile, automated model that certifies repeatable, automated "Fast-Pass" paths for engineering teams.
Lead the Patterns Council: Head the collaboration between Cloud Platform, Engineering, and Product leadership to groom and prioritize the enterprise backlog of "Paved Paths." Ensure the Central Hub builds and certifies reusable, cloud-native blueprints using Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and Policy-as-Code (PoC).
Enterprise Innovation & Resilience
Emerging Frontiers: Advise the future direction of critical disciplines at CME Group. Champion frontiers such as AI/ML edge inference, a "GenAI-First" design approach, and Compute as an Asset Class, translating these into actionable enterprise architectures.
Resilience & FinOps: Ensure foundational blueprints integrate advanced resiliency frameworks (such as active/active deployments and disaster recovery) and cloud cost-optimization models to lower spend and reduce operational burden across the portfolio.
Strategic Cross-Functional Influence: Negotiate and influence at executive levels, establishing collaborative partnerships with GIS Architecture, Product Owners, and Tech Solutions Analysts to co-create secure-by-design ecosystems.
Organizational Leadership & Culture
Cultivate Ownership & Culture: Empower delivery teams and multiple engineering pods to build highly resilient applications by embedding a culture of end-to-end ownership directly into architectural templates.
Capability Alignment & Mentorship: Apply a comprehensive understanding of CME Group's market differentiators to align people, processes, and resources. Mentor Directors, Staff Architects, and the broader engineering community to uplift core architecture competencies across the organization.
What You’ll Bring
Experience & Education
Professional Background: 15+ years of progressive experience in software engineering and enterprise architecture, with a proven track record of executive leadership within high-throughput, ultra-low latency (ULL), or tier-one financial services (SIFMU) environments.
Education: Bachelor’s or Master’s degree in Computer Science, Engineering, or a related technical discipline.
Technical & Cloud Expertise
Financial Systems Architecture: Recognized subject matter expert in massive-scale, deterministic, and ultra-low latency (ULL) financial systems.
Cloud & Software Engineering: Advanced expertise managing complex cloud migrations, navigating sophisticated cloud topologies, and deep technical knowledge of Google Cloud Platform (GCP) architecture, hybrid-cloud environments, and core engineering practices (e.g., C++, high-throughput messaging).
Modern Security Posture: Advanced expertise in DevSecOps, Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA), Policy-as-Code tooling, and automated compliance checking to safely accelerate delivery pipelines.
Leadership & Strategic Agility
Strategic Agility: Exceptional perspective and situational judgment, capable of making high-quality, decisive choices within specific domains even when faced with incomplete information or uncertainty.
Frameworks & Methodologies: Thorough understanding of industry-aligned frameworks (such as TOGAF 10) practically applied within an agile, product-centric operating model.
Influence & Conflict Management: Proven ability to manage conflict, build effective cross-functional teams, and align product, engineering, and security goals across disparate, executive-level stakeholder groups.
Desired Certifications
Enterprise Architecture: TOGAF Certification (specifically TOGAF 10) is highly preferred.
Cloud Architecture: Google Cloud Certified (GCP) Professional Cloud Architect is highly desirable.
#LI-JK1
CME Group is committed to offering a competitive total rewards package for our employees that recognizes their contributions to the business and reflects our long-term investment in their future. The pay range for this role is $186,200-$310,300. Actual salary offered will be dependent on a wide array of factors including but not limited to: relevant experience, skills, education and comparison to internal employees (where relevant). Our compensation program also includes an annual target bonus opportunity for all employees, as well as the opportunity to become an owner in the company through our broad-based equity program. Through our benefits program, we strive to offer flexibility, value and choice. From comprehensive health coverage, to a retirement package that includes both a 401(k) and an active pension plan, to highly competitive education reimbursement provisions, paid time off and a mental health benefit, CME Group offers a holistic benefits package for our team and their dependents.
CME Group: Where Futures are Made
CME Group is the world’s leading derivatives marketplace. But who we are goes deeper than that. Here, you can impact markets worldwide. Transform industries. And build a career by shaping tomorrow. We invest in your success and you own it – all while working alongside a team of leading experts who inspire you in ways big and small. Problem solvers, difference makers, trailblazers. Those are our people. And we’re looking for more.
At CME Group, we embrace our employees' unique experiences and skills to ensure that everyone’s perspectives are acknowledged and valued. As an equal-opportunity employer, we consider all potential employees without regard to any protected characteristic.
Important Notice: Recruitment fraud is on the rise, with scammers using misleading promises of job offers and interviews to solicit money and personal information from job seekers. CME Group adheres to established procedures designed to maintain trust, confidence and security throughout our recruitment process. Learn more here.